In Emilia-Romagna, racing trucking and Formula 1 have arranged to meet just a few kilometers apart, as if fate had decided to mix twenty-ton bisons with thousand-horsepower single-seaters. In Misano, the first day of the Grand Prix Truck, and in Brisighella, a medieval village of stone and silence, the great celebration of the truckers’ community intertwined with the awarding of the Lorenzo Bandini Trophy to Kimi Antonelli.
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Two seemingly distant events, yet held together by the same hand: that of Geronimo La Russa, president of Aci, who for the first time was in those parts wearing the double hat of head of the Automobile Club and member of the FIA World Council. A testament to Aci’s commitment to motorsport.
Trucks take center stage in Misano
In Misano, the paddock was a carnival of sheet metal, giant tires, and the smell of diesel that still smells like real work. Spectators in the stands and among the stalls, people who came to see racing trucks transformed into circus beasts. It’s not Formula 1, it’s better: it’s the Formula 1 of family men, drivers who know every curve of the A1 like the veins in their own arm.
“A great celebration of sport, technology, and work,” said La Russa after greeting the leaders of the Misano World Circuit, Luca Colaiacovo and Andrea Albani. And he was right: here adrenaline is also salary, assembly line, it’s Italy transporting Italy. Even trucks now look to sustainability: green materials, engines that pretend to repent for the black smoke.
The great celebration in Brisighella
Then, just a few hairpin turns away, in Brisighella, the ritual becomes more intimate and higher. The Bandini Trophy, memory of a driver that Emilia lost too soon, ends up in the hands of Kimi Antonelli, leader of the Formula 1 World Championship. The journey started from Imola, touched Faenza, and ended in the medieval village, as if glory had to pass through the narrow streets of a town where time seems to have stopped in the 1300s.
The award ceremony
La Russa, on the sidelines of the award, spoke with the voice of someone who knows that certain moments are not just prizes: “A celebration that exalts the territory and that, rightly, rewards and thanks Kimi for all he is giving to Italian sport.” Because Antonelli is a symbol of winning Italy. The simple boy, the talent who does not play the diva. “A winning Italy, but also a way of being that in its simplicity is conquering the hearts of sports fans,” added La Russa.
Aci’s strategy
Thus, between the roar of racing trucks and the respectful silence of Brisighella, ACI did its job: holding together the heavy engine of the economy and the light engine of the dream. Trucking that is industry, effort, export, and Formula 1 that is national pride, pure talent, future. Two sides of the same Emiliano coin: one that knows how to make tortellini as well as it knows how to make frames, that knows how to race trucks as well as it knows how to fly single-seaters.
